Legal expert Mark Webbink, who formerly worked for Red Hat, has just joined the Board of Directors of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Webbinks gained expert knowledge of intellectual property in his former position with the Linux enterprise.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) provides voluntary legal support to free software projects. Eben Moglen, professor of law and member of the Free Software Foundation board, founded SFLC in 2005.

Webbink worked his way up to the Red Hat’s Deputy General Counsel for intellectual property questions after joining the company in the year 2000 and is regarded as an expert on Open Source software and patent issues. Webbink, who left Red Hat in August 2007, is convinced that Open Source developers return best results if they have sufficient support to keep legal issues of their backs. Webbink will be officially introduced at the SFLC’s annual general meeting, October 12, at the Columbia Law School in New York.

With the Free Software Foundation Europe as the idea source, international and open source lawyers have started a publication to help the legal profession understand issues surrounding free and open source software. The lawyers have taken the open source community as a model for their project.

Just a couple of days after the latest verbal attacks by Microsoft CEO Ballmer, Linux distributor Red Hat really does find itself at the receiving end of a patent lawsuit, however, this attack also targets Microsoft partner Novell.

Attorneys at the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) have filed a lawsuit against 14 electronics companies for copyright infringements. The suit accuses the companies of selling products containing BusyBox software in violation of the GPL.